


An Early Birthday Present

by Kizzia



Series: Twelve Days of Ficmas (plus Christmas Eve) 2014 [11]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Gifts, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, series 3 doesn't exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 05:45:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3108299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kizzia/pseuds/Kizzia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John takes a bit of risk with Sherlock’s present.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Early Birthday Present

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AtlinMerrick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlinMerrick/gifts).



> From Atlinmerrick's prompt Cream, Dream.
> 
> I have gone very off-piste with this prompt, thanks firstly to my brain playing word association and coming up with a completely different word to those given and secondly to my plot bunny running off this afternoon on a tangent from that third word and refusing to get back on track this evening, no matter what I bribed it with. 
> 
> TL:DR apologies, Atlin, if it isn’t what you’d hoped for.

‘Here.’ John holds out an envelope to Sherlock as he sets his coffee mug down on the bedside table. ‘Early birthday present.’

Sherlock raises an eyebrow but makes no other comment as accepts the gift, swiftly flicking open the flap and peering inside. His forehead wrinkles briefly as he draws out two white rectanges of stiff paper but then it clears.

‘Tickets for a show. Interesting but ...’

His voice tails off as he turns them over, face going blank and body freezing as he reads just where John intends to take him that afternoon.

John, who has been perched on the side of the bed, rubs at the back of his neck as he fights the urge to snatch them back and demand Sherlock delete the episode from his mind immediately. On the basis that he can’t possibly make matters any worse, he decides to attempt an explanation first.

‘It was something your mother said to me on Boxing Day, while you and Mycroft were, in the loosest possible sense of the term, getting a breath of fresh air. She told me about the first time she took you to a show in the West End, how your face lit up when the first actor appeared in the auditorium, how you badgered her for lessons in all sorts of things afterwards and-’

‘You applied my methods.’ Sherlock cuts in, making John jump, as he hadn’t actually been sure Sherlock had even noticed he was talking. ‘You thought about what those lessons might have been, realised just how much three hours watching what most people would dismiss as silliness had shaped my life, understood just how important some of the ideas and skills that came out of the obsessions it generated became. And then, instead of just shrugging your shoulders and filing it all away in the “information on Sherlock’s childhood” section of your mind, you decided it was worth commemorating. You thought seeing it again would make me happy.’

Finally he lifts his head so John can see his expression. It is soft; face open and joyful in a way that is usually reserved for their most intimate of moments.

‘I was right, then?’

Sherlock nods, running his thumb over the word CATS printed in the middle of the tickets as his lips curl up in a very feline smile.

‘Yes, you were.’

**Author's Note:**

> In case you’ve read this and wondered what sort of mind altering substances I was consuming as I wrote, I feel I should give a bit of background as to what sparked this. I suspect the cream/dream to cat part makes at least a little sense but the link between Cats the Musical and Sherlock less so. 
> 
> Well, apart from it being a very obvious thing to have sparked Sherlock’s love of dancing, some of the contents of the show itself - a cat profficient in magic and conjuring tricks beating the master criminal cat who controlled all the agents of crime – seemed to ring a few bells to me, not to mention an actor cat who could play any part, including that of a fearsome pirate. There are probably more parallels if you keep looking. Plus the fact that as Mummy Holmes is canonically a musicals fan and Cats opened in the West End in 1982, it is the obvious choice for her to introduce Sherlock to the concept. I'm only a year older than Sherlock & it was both my first musical and my first obsession! 
> 
> I should probably also say that T.S. Elliot wrote the poems Cats is based around in 1939 – well after all the Sherlock stories were published. As such, I’d be very surprised if Macavity the Mystery Cat hadn’t been written as the cat equivalent of Moriarty – he even moves his head from side to side with movement like a snake!


End file.
